Boozhoo, tansi, kíl 'láa, & hello from our team!
We hope that you are doing well in this challenging time. We are thinking of you in this important week as we reflect and learn as well as commemorate the children who never made it home, Orange Shirt Day, and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. We acknowledge the past and present harmful actions against Indigenous Peoples as well as Indigenous Peoples’ resilience.
This week we are also speaking to various media about the project. In case you are interested, Patrick White of the Globe and Mail published this article on our work today.
Please accept our apologies for not being in touch for a while. We had hoped to keep you updated monthly but had difficulty doing that for several reasons. One key reason is that we have been busy collecting data through national polls and painstakingly working on the analyses and planning for the report. Another is that our capacity decreased as one of our key team members, Katelin Neufeld, left for another position as the funding for her Mitacs Industrial Internship with Probe Research Inc and Postdoctoral Fellowship ended. Fortunately, Katelin continues to be involved on a smaller scale. The final reason is coronavirus related. We are thankful that all our team members are healthy, but there has been a lot more childcare this year for Katherine Starzyk, who has young kids.
What we’ve learned from the experience of the past few months is that we need to increase the capacity of our team. At present, all members of our team do this work part-time alongside other professional and educational demands. Though we are making progress and talented and dedicated students continue to contribute to the project in many ways, our goal this year will be to secure funding to hire at least one or two people to work on the project full-time.
Our priority right now, however, is to share the first report and develop a website for the project. We will have all this ready for you this fall. So many people and groups are helping to make this possible. Two we want to highlight now are Probe Research Inc (https://www.probe-research.com) and Vincent Design Inc (https://vincentdesign.ca). Probe Research is a market research firm that is providing expert assistance with the report. Vincent Design is developing our website. They are an Indigenous led company that specializes in web and graphic design as well as marketing.
Please stay tuned!
Best wishes,
The Canadian Reconciliation Barometer Team
https://twitter.com/BarometerLab